Basic Calculator
To calculate the optimal lay stake for your bets, you can use the free Calculator tool on the TeamProfit website. This calculator helps calculate our lay stake for us to match our bets on the exchange, to make our bets with bookmakers risk-free.
Normally we use this Calculator tool to help us calculate the lay stake for two types of bets, qualifying bets and free bets (also known as SNR bets).
Qualifying bets are bets that we place in order for us to qualify for a free bet from a bookmaker. An example of an offer by a bookmaker would be “Bet £10, get a £10 free bet”. In order to qualify for this offer, we would need to place a £10 bet with the bookmaker.
We can match this bet by laying a bet on an exchange to make this bet risk-free. To calculate a qualifying bet’s lay stake, we would use the Calculator on “Normal” bet type. We then enter our stake, back and lay odds onto the Calculator, and an optimal lay stake will be calculated for us, which we then use to lay our bet to make it risk-free.
Note that for qualifying bets, it might be better for us if we picked bets with lower odds, as it will lower our liability and lower our qualifying losses. Qualifying losses refers to the small amount of money we’ll lose due to the differences in back and lay odds as well as the commission that exchanges charge. But don’t worry, this qualifying loss usually range between 20p to 50p, depending on the differences between the back and lay odds and your stake.
Free bets will then be given to us by bookmakers after placing our qualifying bet, and we can get a guaranteed profit from them by using laying a specific lay stake calculated by the Calculator. With free bets, we use the Calculator on “SNR” bet type. SNR stands for Stake Not Returned, as our free bet’s stake is not returned to us if we win our free bet with the bookmaker.
Example of offers that we can use this Calculator with are:
- Bet x Get y offers
- Weekly free bet clubs
- Price boosts
- Coral’s Win Win Get In (double winnings if your team win both halves in a football fixture)
- Williamhill’s 4 Means More (15% bonus on your winnings if 4 or more goals in a football fixture)
- Boylesport’s Crossbar Challenge (double winnings if the ball hits the crossbar in a football fixture)
- Betfair’s free bet if your horse wins the race
- Betway and Skybet’s Money back if your horse finishes 2nd
- Multi bet sign up offers, you can find out more here.
- and many more offers.
Underlaying and Overlaying Lay Bets
When using the Calculator tool to calculate our lay stakes for us, we have the option to underlay or overlay our bets. On the Calculator tool you can change the setting to Advanced display.
Once we enter our our stake, back odds and lay odds, the option for underlaying and overlaying our bets will appear. The benefits of underlaying and overlaying our bets can be found in our underlaying and overlaying guide.
Refund Calculator
This calculator can be used to calculate our lay stake for refund offers to guarantee ourselves a risk-free profit regardless of the outcome on what we’re betting on. An example of a refund offer may be “Bet £25, get a £25 free bet if your bet loses”. We can use the normal Calculator tool to match our bet, but we’ll only get the free bet if our bet loses. If our bet wins, we won’t make any profit.
By using the refund calculator instead, we stand to guarantee ourselves a slightly smaller profit regardless of whether or not our bet wins or loses. To use this calculator, we enter our stake, back and lay odds, and the free bet that the bookmaker will offer us if our bet loses. In our above example of “bet £25 get £25 free bet if we lose”, we’ll be entering £25 into the free bet award section. Next, the free bet retention will the amount of real cash that we can get from the free bet. Normally, this would range from 70% - 80%, but if you’re new to matched betting, you might want to put 70% - 75% instead, until you are more confident.
The lay stake and liability will be calculated for you, and you can then place your bet with the bookmaker and lay it. Make sure you have enough balance in your exchange to cover your liability before you take this bet.
Examples of offers that we can use the refund calculator with are:
- Refund Offers (Get free bets if your bet loses)
- Skybet’s “refund your stake as a free bet if your bet loses” on popular horse races
- Refund sign up offers from Unibet, Betbright and others
Early Payout Calculator
The Early Pay Out Calculator is an advanced calculator that comes with membership to Outplayed.
This calculator can be used to lock in our profits on “2 Up” offers. A “2 Up” offer states that if the team you are betting on is up 2 goals in a football match (2-0, 3-1, 4-2), the bookmaker will consider your bet won and pay you out immediately before the game ends.
For an example, the “2 Up” offer is applied to popular fixture Chelsea v Sunderland this weekend on Paddypower. We place a bet on Chelsea to win. At half time, Chelsea are now up 2-0. Paddypower will have considered our bet won and paid us out because Chelsea are already 2 up. Even if Sunderland manages to score 2 goals in the 2nd half, causing Chelsea to draw 2-2, we would’ve still won our bet, even though Chelsea didn’t win in the end.
However, most of the time, it is very hard for the other team to catch up by scoring 2 goals, therefore most of the time, we wouldn’t profit from the “2 Up” offer. This is where the early payout calculator comes in, and we can use it to guarantee ourselves a small profit when our team goes 2 up on a “2 Up” qualified game.
Using the early payout calculator, we enter our stake and our back and lay odds. We place our bet and lay it on an exchange. And when our team goes 2 up, just enter the lay odds of our team at that moment, and a new lay stake will be calculated for us, and the profit we’ll guarantee will be displayed as well.
Example of offers where we can use this calculator with are:
- Paddypower’s 2 Up
- Bet365’s Early Payout offer
Casino EV Calculator
Bookmakers offer plenty of offers for punters so that they keep coming back for more, casino offers included!
Casino offers DO NOT guarantee a profit, and there’s a chance you might lose your own cash while doing them, but there is a positive expected value in doing them. Expected value refers to the value you’ll be getting in the long term doing casino offers.
Casino offers often offer you a certain reward if you stake a certain amount on their casino, where the rewards range from free slot spins to free casino credits. These free spins and casino credits often come with a wagering requirement, which means you’ll need to wager a certain amount before it converts into real, withdrawable cash.
An example of a casino offer might be “Wager £50 on Blackjack, get £10 free casino credit with 5x wagering requirements”. 5x wagering requirements in this example would be £10 x 5 = £50, which means we’ll need to wager the free £10 casino credit 5 times = £50 before we can withdraw that money.
Not all casino offers have positive expected value, and that’s where the EV Calculator comes in. Matched bettors only do casino offers if they have a positive expected value.
We can use this calculator by entering the bonus amount that the bookmaker is offering us, along with their wagering requirements. The wagering requirements are often not displayed with the offer, and you’ll need to find this in the offer’s terms and conditions page. Keep in mind that some games on the casino may contribute different amounts to the wagering requirements.
Example
In this casino offer by Betway, we can see that they have a wagering requirements of 50x. Also, it also says that Blackjack only contributes 8% to the wagering requirements. That means that for every £1 we wager on Blackjack, only £0.08 is added to our wagering requirements.
This means that if we have a £20 casino bonus from this casino offer, our wagering requirements will be:
Which means we’ll need to wager £12,500 on Blackjack before our bonus becomes withdrawable cash.
House edge refers to the advantage the bookmaker has on that casino game. You can often find that particular game’s house edge by clicking on the “info” button on the game. Some casinos also provide a “Payout percentages” page.
For an example, on Betway’s “Payout percentages” page, we can see that Blackjack has a house edge of 99.89%. We can enter this into the calculator.
Once we enter all our data, the calculator will let us know if this casino offer has a positive expected value or not.
Example of offers we can use this calculator with:
- Casino offers
Each Way Calculator
The Each Way Calculator is used on horse races, where we can make risk-free profits from placing each way bets and laying them on an exchange.
This calculator is available for people who are signed up to Outplayed.
Each way betting can be thought of as an arb, but they are much safer than arbs as it’s harder to get gubbed from each way betting.
An each way bet is divided into 2, a win bet and a place bet. Therefore, to lay an each way bet, we’ll need to lay two bets, even though we only placed a single each-way bet on the bookmaker.
We can enter our odds for the each way bet, our stake, as well as our place payout. This place payout can be found on the bookmaker’s page, normally given as a fraction. We then fill in the lay odds and the commission percentage, and our lay stake for both bets will be displayed, along with the profit that we’ll make from this bet.
Example of offers we can use this calculator with:
- Each way horse betting
- Each way golf tournament betting
- Each way sports outright betting (Premier League winner, Bundesliga winner, etc)
Dutching Calculator
Dutching can also be thought of as another arb, although it is also safer than an arb, as we’ll be less likely to be gubbed by dutching.
Dutching refers to placing bets to cover all possible outcomes in a sports event without laying them. We take advantage of the different odds offered by different bookmakers to guarantee ourselves risk-free profits. Dutching can also be used to take on offers by different bookmakers on the same sports event with a single dutch.
For an example, if Bet365 and Paddypower is offering a “2 Up” offer on Chelsea v Man U, we can place a bet on Bet365 on Chelsea, and another bet on Paddypower on Man U, and another bet on Boylesports on Draw for their Crossbar Challenge offer. Without laying anything, we have qualified for 3 different offers with a single dutch. We have also covered all 3 outcomes of the game, making our dutch risk-free.
This dutching calculator can be found on the Outplayed website.
Example of offers we can use this calculator with:
- Dutching for risk-free profits
- Dutching to take on multiple offers on different bookies
- Dutching tennis offers as the exchange might have a different retirement rule from the exchanges.
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